Notes from “Getting the Pretty Stuff In” Presentation at Flashbelt with Paul Burnett

Photoshop

Take a bunch of photos of the exterior of a building
1) Select all the photos
2) Tools –> Open into Layers
3) “Auto-align” the layers
4) (with all of the layers selected) Layer –> Smart Objects –> Convert to smart object
5) Layer –> Smart objects –> Stack mode –> Median

To stitch together a bunch of images into a panoramic or a bigger photo
1) Tools –> photo merge
2) Try “image warping” feature if image is warped

Content-aware Scaling
1) edit –> Content-Aware Scaling
2) on top menu –> “Protect”

Flash

– You can now import photoshop layers directly via the Flash –> Import menu
– “Inverse Kinematics”, a.k.a. skeletons
– Shape Tweening “on steroids!!
– “Bone” and “Bind” tools for skeleton effects.  This has the effect of creating tendons on bones.

Flash Animations
– No more keyframing; just drag and drop!
– You can change the path of the animation easily/visually
– To slow an animation down or make it longer, simply drag the last keyframe to the right or left
– Flash now has an “After Effects”-like motion editor
– Easing is built into each property via the “Motion Editor” panel
– Lots of new easing options via the “Motion Editor” panel
– Simple “Bounce” tween option
– You can save motions/tweens to reuse on new objects
– Share animations via xml files

Illustrator

– Create symbols in Illustrator and import those symbols into Flash

Fireworks

– Fireworks has better jpeg compression than Photoshop!  So, any time you are going to export jpegs for the web, do it in Fireworks!!
– Can create Adobe Air mouse events from main menu

Pixel Bender

– Check out http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Pixel_Bender_Toolkit
– Can do a “green screen” effect
– Can do a blue-red 3D glasses effect
– Can use it over Flash videos